Tickhill resident Albert Burkill, who recently celebrated his 94th birthday, was presented with the Atlantic Star for service in the Merchant Navy during World War II by Lord-Lieutenant of South Yorkshire David Moody.

At the presentation, held at Tickhill Parish Room, Albert was also presented with a UK Merchant Seafarers Veteran’s Badge by Captain Malcolm F Mathison, vice-chairman of The Merchant Navy Association, and Tim Brant, national secretary of the Association.

Congratulations were also given by Caroline Flint MP, Ray Hill, Mayor of Tickhill, Rev John Sweed and Lt Col Gordon Whitehead of the US Army.

Albert was joined at the ceremony by his wife Margaret, family and friends.

Although in a reserved occupation Albert was eager to play his part during WWII and joined the Merchant Navy, serving for approximately three years as an engineer officer on board tankers.

Sailings included carrying aviation fuel from New York.

Such transatlantic crossings which were carrying valuable supplies from America and the colonies to Britain were fraught with danger as German U-Boats attacked the convoys.

High points of his time in New York included seeing Frank Sinatra and the Ink Spots at the Stork Club and boxer Bruce Woodcock at Madison Square Garden.

After the war he worked for many years with British Rail Engineering in Doncaster.

Amongst other things, he was a champion speed skater and the captain of Town Moor Golf Club.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Gainsborough Standard provides news, events and sport features from the Gainsborough area. For the best up to date information relating to Gainsborough and the surrounding areas visit us at Gainsborough Standard regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Gainsborough Standard requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.